


The Nightbirds Cease their Song

by Vampiric_Charms



Series: Burns Most of All [30]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 18:17:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8024092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vampiric_Charms/pseuds/Vampiric_Charms
Summary: Change of any kind is difficult.  Change of this magnitude can be devastating.  Especially, however, when one party refuses to acknowledge the effects such a change will bring into their life and the lives of those around them.





	The Nightbirds Cease their Song

**Author's Note:**

> A slight companion piece to _All the Lives of Our Fears_ , set before that one and very soon after Melkor returns to Angband - perhaps only a few days after. Rated for a bit of violence, but on the lower side of the scale. Think, erm, Klingons and their penchant for throwing furniture and screaming. 
> 
> As always, let me know if you have any requests! I also want to take a minute to thank you all for reading this little series as I write it. This is the 30th addition, and I never thought I would come quite this far when I started writing here so many months ago. So thank you all, dear readers!
> 
> Enjoy!

The room was in shambles. 

Tapestries had been ripped off the walls and slung across the broken furniture. One had been tossed haphazardly toward the fireplace, where low red coals were slowly eating away at the tassels into the fabric itself with small flames, giving off the stench of burning as they grew in strength. Papers and scrolls were in disarray across the floor, cushions from the bed and chaise and chairs pulled to the tattered rugs, several torn open to reveal their feathered innards. The curtains had been ripped from the bed, its posters broken and splintered beyond repair. A chair, the one usually paired with the desk, was in ruins near the wall under the broken window.

Sauron cautiously pushed the heavy door further open, only to quickly pull it closed again when something large and heavy came hurdling toward his head. He waited until he heard it clatter to the floor before attempting his entrance once more.

“My lord?” he said softly into the strange, cold stillness inside. He peered around the door, eyes moving quickly to find their target.

Melkor was stalking to and fro along the far wall like one of his beasts, his steps faltering as he tripped uncharacteristically over his own feet when he tried to look around at his unwelcomed visitor. He reached again for another object to throw, a lone book that had not yet been shredded apart in his rage, but he hesitated when his fogged eyes finally landed on Sauron in the doorway, as if he had not expected the lieutenant to be there but was instead expecting someone else.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, voice rasping through a throat that had done little else but scream obscenities and nothingness for nearly a day. “I told you I wished to be left alone. Leave me. _Leave_!”

Sauron simply latched the door at his back in response and hastened across the room to pull the tapestry from the fire before it became fully engulfed and set the room aflame. He felt Melkor watching him, felt the searing eyes on his shoulders, but he did not turn to meet that furious gaze. He closed his hands over the flames attempting to eat the thick fabric, absorbing the energy away until its threat was no longer a worry. The tapestry was beyond saving, however, and he slowly began to fold it to place off to the side, a small attempt to at least begin repairing the room itself.

A bright glow to his right suddenly caught his attention and he glanced over, startled to see the three Silmarils in their iron-wrought chest staring boldly up at him from velvet wrappings. The chest had been knocked in whatever fury had torn through the room, leaving the lid open and gaping, like some great maw ready to swallow the entire room with their enchantment. They looked so small, there, untouched and unheeded by their new lord. Sauron stared at them, feeling a sick swoop in his stomach. The crown he had been crafting to hold the jewels was not quite finished, awaiting just a few tweaks and bits of flair, and he had not asked where the stones were being held in the meantime. He had not _cared_ to know.

Sauron frowned and wordlessly tossed the folded, damaged tapestry over the open chest, blocking them and their choking light from view. These were not to worry about just now, and were only a small cause for the larger problem they currently faced. He stood, brushing the wrinkles from his robes as he turned to finally meet that icy blue stare that had never left him.

“I have grown concerned about you, Lord Melkor,” he said evenly.

Melkor waved his hand in a wide, dismissive gesture that was clearly meant to be demeaning and started to pace again. “There is nothing to be concerned about. Leave me be.”

“There certainly _is_ reason for concern,” Sauron replied, taking a step forward as Melkor turned to put his back in Sauron’s direction. “You nearly set fire to your entire quarters. And this -” He made a nod to the space they were standing in, unseen even if it was implied, “this is really quite alarming, if I may speak plainly. So much destruction!”

“No one gave you permission to speak to me this way,” Melkor snapped without so much as a glance. He was staring out the window, the broken glass of the frame casting odd shadows about his face with the setting sun. But his tone was not nearly as harsh as his words, and Sauron continued his trek across the room, avoiding broken bits of debris and sharp objects strewn across the floor with his robe raised nearly to his knees, and joined him at the sill. Melkor did not flinch away when Sauron placed his hand gently on his tense shoulder.

“Is something troubling you?” Sauron asked quietly, needlessly, into the dense stillness that had fallen about them.

Ash drifted by on the light winds, carried as snow across the grounds, and the hush of falling flakes was the only sound to be heard as they landed against the sides of their fortress. Sauron leaned slightly against the side of Melkor’s back and slid his hand over to rest between the blades of his shoulders. He reached his other hand around Melkor’s arm and out through the broken panes of glass, into the tepid air outside, and they both watched in silence as ash dotted his pale skin to look like more freckles, miscolored and out of place.

“Our volcano has been restless, hasn’t it?” he mused, more to the room than to his companion. “It has been grumbling in a most displeased way for several days now. You do not think it will erupt, do you? Perhaps I should rehouse the dragons from their current pens. But,” he added in a soft voice, pulling his arm inside and dislodging shards of glass with his the thick draped fabric of his sleeve, “it is certainly not the state of the mountains that has you in such disarray, is it.”

Melkor growled angrily at this statement and jerked away from him, stalking further down the wall toward the splintery remains of the ruined chair, hunching in on himself. “What do you know of it?” he snarled miserably.

Sauron let his hands drop to his sides, not reaching for him again, not yet, and watched as Melkor stumbled away with a twisting in his stomach that felt terrible and hollow. He remained where he was at the window, resisting the temptation to rush forward and take Melkor by the shoulders to shake sense into him. Or, even, pull him into some tight embrace to shield him from all of this. Instead, he said in a placating tone, “Perhaps, my lord, you would do well to - eat something?”

Melkor noticed the small hitch in his words, the slight hesitation, and he looked up with a wounded expression on his face that was quickly overtaken by fierce anger.

“How do you _dare_! You - you would dare - _you_ \- !”

Sauron barely had time to react before that broken chair came hurdling toward him, pieces of fragmented wood flying away as it tore through the air. He ducked, turning slightly to watch as it shattered, hardly reminiscent of a chair at all, on the floor near the closed door behind him. There was a great cracking sound, and Sauron hastily looked back around to see Melkor ripping apart his desk, the only piece of furniture still intact. The top came off, a broken slab of heavy dark-stained oak now jagged and dangerous, and Sauron dashed across the space separating them before the piece could be thrown with possibly devastating results.

“Melkor!” he cried, letting his own anger come through with the panic he didn’t try to hide. “Melkor, desist with this foolishness!” 

He grabbed the Vala’s arm tightly with both of his hands, pressing close despite the threat of that large beam of wood still being aimed for his head. “I would never think you weak,” he said breathlessly, understanding washing through him as emotions that were not his own hit him hard through a connection that had long been severed. “ _Never_ have you been weak, or delicate, or repulsive - and you never will be!”

Slowly, very slowly, the broken piece of wood thudded to the ground at their feet with a reverberating smack that shook Sauron to his core. He tugged at Melkor’s arm, one hand moving gently up to his shoulder to trace little soothing patterns there until they both were able to move as the tension drained away.

The room was, truly, in shambles, but he pulled Melkor toward the grubby detritus-strewn bed and lightly pushed him down to sit among the ruins of torn canvas curtain and mahogany poster there. The air was growing repellant, cloying with dust and tiny shards of wood and glass that sunk into mouth or lungs with each breath. Sauron knelt between Melkor’s knees, reaching up and cupping his face almost harshly with both of his hands so that his fingers curled into his cheeks, forcing the Vala’s attention to meet his own. 

“Will you listen to me now, you boorish _brute_?” he demanded, none too gently, his eyes hard and blazing. “Have you gotten that all out of your system, then, all of this destructive rage?”

Melkor sneered at him, but he nodded silently just the same, making no effort to pull away as his eyes drifted slowly closed.

Sauron lessened the severity of his grasp, loosening his hold at least until his fingernails no longer bit little crescents into Melkor’s skin. He still left his hands where they were. “Perhaps…” He paused for a moment, mind moving quickly to select the proper words without setting off another burst of explosive anger. But Melkor looked, in that moment, so very defeated, and Sauron frowned as his own anger seeped fully away. It was quite likely he already knew everything he was about to hear, on some level. “Perhaps,” Sauron began again, more kindly, “this new body of yours, pleasing as it is to the eye, has requirements that would explain your - your behavior over the last few days. Would you agree?”

That behavior had started as a simple bad mood with harsh words and a few foul bits of temperament and escalated very rapidly to _this_ , around them. Melkor grunted his response, neither a positive nor a negative, but Sauron continued regardless. “I would suggest - as only an experiment, of course, to see if it alleviates any ill symptoms you may currently have - that you eat some small bit of a meal and find sleep for the evening.”

There was a cut across Melkor’s forehead, shallow and nonessential, but it was beginning to bleed. Sauron reached up toward it, intending to daub at the blood with his sleeve until it stopped, but Melkor caught his wrist. Sauron started, not expecting the Vala to move, and glanced over to meet his troubled blue eyes.

“Will it help?” Melkor asked roughly, his grip tight with what could only be described as fear. “Will - will this food and sleep remove whatever fog has come over me, Mairon? I can no longer trace my own thoughts, and I feel surmounted by such a deep haze within my mind. I cannot make it _stop_.”

Sauron turned his wrist in that steel hold and pried away only until he could take Melkor’s hand into his own, threading their fingers together tenderly. “You are showing signs of hunger, my lord, and of sleep deprivation,” he explained softly. “I am only guessing so far as I can, but I can surmise as much, yes. It might be that a corporeal form such as the one you have been _given_ ,” he had to stop himself from using _confined_ , as Melkor’s eyes locked so desperately with his own, “it likely requires food, and rest. It would certainly not hurt to try.”

There was silence for a stretching minute. Melkor’s eyes still caught with his, emotions of desperation and longing and fear of having lost what he once had pouring through that connection that had been shared for so long, tumbling forward without restraint. Sauron did not even try to filter them away, and he opened himself to the torrent, giving the flood somewhere to go before it could build into another burst behind Melkor’s walls. He allowed those reaching tendrils of energy, searching and forlorn, to meet upon his own, and he sent back _safe_ , and _I’m here_ , and _you’re home_ , and _you’re still powerful_ along that cord, hoping to fight down some of that horrible sense of hopelessness he had felt earlier.

He reached up with his free hand to brush fallen hair from Melkor’s face, revealing his sharp blue gaze more clearly, and he ran his fingers feather-light across his cheek and jaw, physically confirming what he was saying in his mind as best he could.

“Will you, my lord?” he asked aloud after a moment, pressing his palm flat to Melkor’s cheek without ever breaking contact with his skin. “Will you allow me to assist you?”

 _Yes_ , the reply came back through his mind, stronger than the spoken word might have been.

Sauron smiled, a small upward turn to his lips that caught with a little sparkle in his eyes. “Thank you, Melkor. Come,” he murmured, standing and offering his hands for Melkor to take. The Vala gripped them tightly, allowing Sauron to heft him back to his feet with a wave of question he did not bother to ask. Sauron answered regardless. “Your quarters are not fit for further habitation; I am relocating you to my own for the time being. You will be far more comfortable there.”

He did not try to take Melkor around the waist to offer support, or even slip a hand under his shoulders, and the Vala walked from the room under his own strength, Sauron only a step behind. There was not far to go.

“I will send someone down to the larder to bring us up a tray of soft cheeses and bread, and these lovely sour cherries we’ve been supplied with, my lord, I think you will like them.” Sauron put his hand on Melkor’s shoulder again, not physical support so much as a gesture of genuine compassion. “I will have sweet wine, myself, but perhaps you would prefer oak matured mead?”

“You will eat with me?” Melkor asked in that rasping voice, turning his head with no small amount of surprise written into his wearied features. Sauron simply nodded once, grinning kindly again. “Yes,” Melkor replied softly, “the mead rather than wine.”

“Good. I will call for someone to bring the tray as soon as we’re settled. In the meantime - ”

“You will stay with me, won’t you,” Melkor interrupted just as Sauron put his hand to the latch of the door. Sauron turned to look at him, somewhat confused by the question with such an obvious answer, but Melkor continued as though it must be seen through to the end. “You will not leave? I will command you if I must.”

Sauron opened the door and gestured Melkor inside, following him closely into the warm space with its cheery fire and plush furnishings. Melkor immediately sought his favorite chair in front of the crackling fireplace, sinking into it with an audible sigh as his body finally found the solace of ease and comfort. 

“I never had any intention of leaving you,” Sauron whispered, kneeling at Melkor’s side to touch his face and sliding his fingers back into that silken black hair where it tumbled over his pointed ear. Melkor turned into his touch, his eyes finally closing with silent relief. Sauron’s fingertips ghosted over his eyelids, a slight pressure so gentle and reassuring, and felt the softness of his dark eyelashes against his skin. 

“Rest now, my lord, and I will call for our meal.”


End file.
